Site Mobile Navigation

A Campaign for Mayor, and for a Mate

On the dance floor, Adam Riff, left, and Chris Coffey share their first dance at Frederick P. Rose Hall, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.Credit
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

When Chris Coffey talks about love, he often talks about New York.

He’s passionate about the city (a self-proclaimed “New York exceptionalist”), which isn’t surprising, given that until 2012 Mr. Coffey was an assistant commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in the Bloomberg administration, and his mother, Diane Coffey, was a chief of staff for Mayor Edward I. Koch for nearly a decade.

“People come in and out of my life,” said Mr. Coffey, 34, “but New York has been a constant.”

He had birthday parties at Gracie Mansion as a youngster, and caught the political bug at an early age. At 9, he was handing out leaflets for Mr. Koch, and he was only 21 when he dropped out of George Washington University to work on the first Bloomberg campaign.

But he was far less precocious when it came to his personal life, dating infrequently. “I would say I didn’t have the time, but everyone has the time,” he said. “It’s about finding the right person.”

They were introduced at a community board meeting in 2006 when Mr. Riff was a legislative aide for State Senator Tom Duane, one of the first openly gay members of the State Senate. Mr. Coffey impressed the more-reserved Mr. Riff with his energy and eloquence. So much so that Mr. Riff, a Northwestern graduate from Palo Alto, Calif., exchanged several emails with friends afterward inquiring about “the cute guy in the mayor’s office.”

But Mr. Coffey didn’t recall the meeting when Mr. Riff was hired three years later as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender outreach director for the Bloomberg 2009 re-election campaign. Which is not to say that Mr. Coffey was oblivious to Mr. Riff’s intelligence, integrity and trim physique. He quickly concluded that Mr. Riff was the ideal person ... to help him find a boyfriend.

“He gave me an unofficial assignment to find him a date,” said Mr. Riff, now 31, who never considered nominating himself. “I did not join a campaign because I was looking for a relationship.”

Though Mr. Riff had more experience dating than Mr. Coffey, he also was mostly focused on his career — and had a strict rule against going out with anyone he worked with. So he didn’t mind arranging setups.

But that changed in June. It was Gay Pride Month, and as the two men spent an increasing amount of time together both in and out of the office, Mr. Riff found himself admiring Mr. Coffey’s impulsive style.

“With Chris, nothing is impossible,” Mr. Riff said. “He doesn’t spend time focusing on the negative things, or the reason he can’t do something.” This was a revelation to Mr. Riff, who is circumspect by nature. It was also a bit of an aphrodisiac. “Chris was my campaign crush,” he said.

But it was Mr. Coffey who was going out of his way to stop by Mr. Riff’s desk each day, pulling up a chair to chat. Ostensibly, their conversations were about the campaign, but they veered off topic enough to learn they had much in common.

“The more time I spent with him, the more time I wanted to spend with him,” said Mr. Coffey, who started sending Mr. Riff emails on the rare days they had off. But Mr. Coffey didn’t consider their growing bond to be romantic. Not even when they made plans to have dinner on a Saturday night. “Two guys can go out on a Saturday night. I didn’t think it was weird.”

Mr. Riff did. Or if not weird, at least confusing. As he characteristically deliberated about where to make a reservation, he was looking for a restaurant that would make it seem “a little bit like a date,” he said.

They ended up lingering for several hours over a meal on a candlelit patio, but when Mr. Riff walked Mr. Coffey home, there was just a quick hug goodbye before Mr. Coffey turned to go.

That’s when Mr. Riff kissed him.

“Then everything made sense,” Mr. Coffey said of his enthusiastic response. “Why I was writing him notes. Why, when I wasn’t with him, I was thinking about him.”

Photo

The couple after exchanging vows.Credit
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

The first throes of love coincided with the last days of a mayoral campaign, which meant working 16-hour days and weekends.

For Mr. Coffey and Mr. Riff, it was both exciting and romantic, as their effort on Mr. Bloomberg’s behalf was amplified by their feelings for each other. The big question was what would happen after the election.

Mr. Coffey, true to form, was ready to take the plunge and live together. “I didn’t need to go back and wonder if this was the real thing,” he said. “I don’t know if people do that. I don’t.”

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Mr. Riff favored going slow and steady as they continued to date and explore the city. Mr. Riff proved to be the more adventurous of the two, introducing the fourth-generation native New Yorker to new neighborhoods and new cuisines, such as borscht in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and Thai food in Elmhurst, Queens, and enjoying his partner’s euphoric response. “New York is more than just a place for him,” Mr. Riff said. “He cares about it in almost a religious way.”

It was May 2011 when they moved in together, which turned out to be only a few months before Mr. Riff made another life-changing decision: to donate a kidney to his father, Joel Riff, who had been on dialysis for several years.

“The way Adam selflessly stepped in, that’s just how he is,” Mr. Duane said. “Anyone who ever worked for me was always underpaid and overworked, but they wanted to save the world. And that’s Adam.”

This time it was Mr. Coffey who was encouraging careful consideration. “I couldn’t understand the idea of putting yourself in harm’s way,” he said of his initial reaction. But by the time of the transplant in December, he was fully on board, flying to San Francisco for the surgery and sleeping in a chair by his partner’s hospital bed through the early days of his difficult recovery.

Mr. Riff said he was overwhelmed with emotion. Not just by Mr. Coffey’s devotion, but by the depth of the connection he felt between them.

“Adam thinks everything through in excruciating detail,” said David Spielfogel, a senior adviser to Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, “and Chris was the one time when he knew it was right and didn’t have to agonize over it.”

For Mr. Coffey, now a consultant for Tusk Strategies, a political and strategic consulting firm in New York, it was even simpler. “There was a part of me that was always missing,” he said. “I met Adam, and it wasn’t missing anymore.”

On Jan. 4, Mr. Riff, now a first-year student at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, stood beside Mr. Coffey beneath a wedding canopy at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Frederick P. Rose Hall in Manhattan.

“You’ve given me the safety to take risks,” Mr. Riff told him, as Rabbi Jonathan Z. Maltzman led the couple in their vows.

(When Mr. Coffey’s mother told Mr. Koch that her Irish Catholic son was converting to Judaism, he was “laughing and laughing,” she said of the mayor, who was hospitalized at the time. “He was dying, but he was laughing.”)

Mr. Riff and Mr. Coffey danced their first dance as a married couple, taking turns spinning each other across the room, framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park.

Mr. Coffey searched for the words to express what he felt for his husband. “He makes me a better man,” he said, before correcting himself. “He makes me a better New Yorker.”

Details The Jewish marriage contract depicted the same view of Central Park as seen from the wedding venue’s windows. The signing of the document, typically done in private, instead was made part of the public wedding ceremony. Propped on each numbered table at the reception was a notepad on which guests were encouraged to jot down their thoughts. The idea behind it, the couple said, was to have the pads serve as keepsakes that they will read on the anniversary that corresponds with the pad’s table number.

A version of this article appears in print on February 2, 2014, on Page ST12 of the New York edition with the headline: A Campaign for Mayor, and for a Mate. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe